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Online Appendixes Ex-Post Merger Evaluation in the UK Retail Market for Books A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Aguzzoni, Luca; Argentesi, Elena; Ciari, Lorenzo; Duso, Tomaso; Tognoni, Massimo Article — Accepted Manuscript (Postprint) Ex-post Merger Evaluation in the U.K. Retail Market for Books The Journal of Industrial Economics Provided in Cooperation with: German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) Suggested Citation: Aguzzoni, Luca; Argentesi, Elena; Ciari, Lorenzo; Duso, Tomaso; Tognoni, Massimo (2016) : Ex-post Merger Evaluation in the U.K. Retail Market for Books, The Journal of Industrial Economics, ISSN 1467-6451, Wiley, Hoboken, Vol. 64, Iss. 1, pp. 170-200, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/joie.12099 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/180821 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. www.econstor.eu This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Luca Aguzzoni, Elena Argentesi, Lorenzo Ciari, Tomaso Duso, Massimo Tognoni: Ex Post Merger Evaluation in the U.K. Retail Market for Books. In: The Journal of Industrial Economics 64 (2016), 1, S. 170-200, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/joie.12099. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving. Ex-post Merger Evaluation in the UK Retail Market for Books Luca Aguzzoni Chief Economist Team, European Commission Elena Argentesi University of Bologna Lorenzo Ciari European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Tomaso Duso Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW Berlin) and Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE) Massimo Tognoni UK Competition & Markets Authority September 19, 2014 Abstract: This paper evaluates the price effects of the merger of two major UK book retailers. We use a dataset containing monthly scanner data on a sample of 200 books in 50 local markets for four years around the merger. We compare the price changes after the merger in shops located in areas where both chains were present before the merger and in areas where only one chain was present. We also investigate the country-wide effect of the merger. We find that the merger did not result in any price increase either at the local or at the national level. Keywords: Mergers, Ex-post Evaluation, Book market, Retail sector Corresponding author: Elena Argentesi, Department of Economics, University of Bologna, Piazza Scaravilli 2, 40126 Bologna, Italy, Tel: + 39 051 2098661, Fax: +39 051 2098040, E-Mail: [email protected]. We wish to thank the Editor and two anonymous referees for very valuable suggestions. This paper is partially based on a research project we undertook for the UK Competition Commission (CC). Paolo Buccirossi and Cristiana Vitale were coauthors of that report and offered regular guidance for this paper; therefore we extend our sincere gratitude for their advice and contributions. We are also grateful to Luca Barbarito, Claire Chambolle, Amrita Ray Chaudhuri, Peter Haan, Cristian Huse, Adam Lederer, Chiara Monfardini, Massimo Motta, and Daniel Rubinfeld as well as our audiences at various seminars and conferences for very useful discussions and suggestions. During the course of this study, the CC staff provided invaluable support for which we are grateful. We also thank Giulio Altomari, Roberto Alimonti, Roberto Cervone, and Carlotta Dandolo for their excellent research assistance. 1 1. Introduction There is a growing interest in retrospective merger studies, which comes principally from the need to understand how mergers alter market structure and welfare. Yet, additional motivation behind this increased interest lies in the perceived need for antitrust agencies to check and improve the effectiveness of their decision making (e.g. Kovacic, 2009). Moreover, from an academic perspective, retrospective merger evaluations are seen as useful in validating structural models for merger simulation, which are increasingly used as an ex-ante instrument to assess policy changes.1 Despite a growing number of studies analyzing the price effect of mergers in a variety of industries, little work exists on the ex-post evaluation of mergers in the retailing sector.2 This is particularly surprising since not only do retail markets constitute a significant part of the economy in terms of value added and employment in all developed countries but these markets are experiencing a great deal of merger activity. Moreover, as noted by Hosken et al. (2012), mergers in retailing are often subject to antitrust scrutiny. For instance, out of 176 grocery markets subject to merger control by the US Federal Trade Commission between 1996 and 2011, 152 were challenged.3 Similarly, the European Commission (EC) reviewed an increasing number of retailing mergers over the past two decades. Out of the 167 mergers in retail trade analyzed by the EC between 1990 and 2008, 13 were either blocked or approved with specific conditions and obligations. Mergers in retailing sectors present some specific features that differentiate them from concentrations in other markets, features that should not just be considered in the merger review process but also in any retrospective study. Indeed, the opening passage of the 2011 joint UK Competition Commission/Office of Fair Trading report on retail mergers (Competition Commission and Office of Fair Trading, 2011; p. 4) reads, “Retail 1 See Nevo and Whinston (2010) and Weinberg (2011). For a contribution that uses ex-post merger analysis to validate a simulation model, see Björnerstedt and Verboven (2012). 2 Among these very few papers, Hastings (2004) analyzes the effects of a merger in the gasoline retail market in the US. Skrainka (2012) studies instead the effects of the merger between two UK grocery retailers using consumer data. See both Ashenfelter, Hosken and Weiberg (2009) and Duso (2012) for reviews of the literature on ex-post merger studies. 3 See Horizontal Merger Investigation Data, Fiscal years 1996 – 2011, Federal Trade Commission Table 4.2. Available at: http://www.ftc.gov/os/2013/01/130104horizontalmergerreport.pdf. 2 mergers account for a significant number of cases that come before the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission…. Moreover, some of the questions that such mergers raise are largely specific to the sector.” In particular, they are characterized by dispersed buyers and sellers (Davis, 2006): Consumers tend to make their purchases within their local shopping location and retail businesses generally have multiple outlets across a country. Yet, retail offers may be set either nationally or locally, which creates interplay between local and national competition. This aspect is particularly relevant for merger assessment, since it implies that any concentration may impact competition at different geographical levels. The focus of the few existing academic papers and most of the policy studies on retailing industries is on mergers in the food sector. However, other retail markets are also important, such as the book market, which shares several peculiar features with the markets for creative goods such as music records, movies, video games, and software. Given the unpredictable and usually short lasting popularity, books are generally characterized by a very short life cycle as well as by uncertain demand and short periods of high profitability.4 These features pose particular challenges for the analysis of the effect of competition on prices in this industry. The same book title may have a different value to consumers in different periods of time and, therefore, retailers’ pricing policy may change accordingly. Moreover, publishers have a rapidly changing portfolio of books. Therefore, it would be incorrect to identify the effect of the merger by simply looking at the price evolution of a constant sample of products. The above considerations suggest the need of expanding the existing evaluation methodologies and the importance of providing new empirical evidence to improve our understanding of competition in retailing sectors and, specifically, cultural goods markets. This study tries to address these issues by analyzing the effect of a consummated merger in the book retail sector. Waterstone’s acquisition of Ottakar’s –two of the major book retailers in the UK at that time– was cleared by the UK Competition Commission (CC) in 2006. During its investigation, the CC identified problematic local markets where both the merging parties competed head-to-head
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